Age affects temporal response, but not durability, to serial ketamine infusions for treatment refractory depression
medRxiv Preprint Server – August 31, 2020
Source: medRxiv
Summary
Ketamine can swiftly alleviate severe depression, but its lasting impact varies. One investigation explored how age influences this. It revealed that older individuals might experience a slower onset of relief from serial infusions. Crucially, however, the durability of their positive response was just as strong as in younger patients. This highlights that while age can affect how quickly benefits appear, it doesn't diminish the long-term effectiveness.
Abstract
Background Ketamine is a rapid-acting treatment for patients with treatment refractory depression (TRD), however treatment responses are often transient and ketamine’s antidepressant action lacks robust clinical durability. Little is known about which patient characteristics are associated with faster or more durable ketamine responses. Ketamine’s antidepressant mechanism is proposed to involve modulation of glutamatergic signaling leading to long term potentiation (LTP) and synaptogenesis, and these neuroplasticity pathways have been shown to be attenuated with older age. We therefore investigated the impact of patient age on the speed and durability of ketamine’s antidepressant effects in veterans receiving serial intravenous ketamine infusions for TRD.